Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness believes Liverpool will beat Sevilla with a bit of style in the Europa League final in Basel on Wednesday. Unai Emerys Sevilla are going for an historic third straight Europa League title, but Liverpool have beaten Manchester United, Borussia Dortmund and Villarreal en-route to the final and Souness told Sky Sports News HQ he thinks the Premier League side will have too much for their Spanish opponents.I fancy Liverpool big time, Souness said. Theyve got the bit between their teeth. I think they will win it and they will win it with a bit of style - theyll have too much for Sevilla. I know they have done well in this competition, but in Spain youve got three big teams and beyond that youve got a lot of averageness.I just think Liverpool will have far too much for them on the night. They will go into the game with their tails up and full of confidence. While you would expect me to back Liverpool, I do try to step back from the association I have with the football club and - without being biased - I think there is only one winner. I think they will win it and they will win it with a bit of style - theyll have too much for Sevilla. Graeme Souness on Liverpool Liverpool may have only finished in eighth place in the Premier League, but Souness believes Jurgen Klopps arrival at Anfield has made a big impact - transforming the atmosphere around the club to inspire the run to Wednesdays final.Hes got everyone excited, everyone believing that the future is bright, Souness said, before adding that he expects the Liverpool manager to stick with similar tactics to those which got the club to this stage.If you come up with a formula where you can turf out the favourites Dortmund and turf out Villarreal, then it will be more of the same. I think theyll go for it, theyve got some very good players, Liverpool. I think theyll have way too much for this team. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has brought a positive atmosphere to Anfield Fellow Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher agrees that Klopp will stick with the tactical formula that helped Liverpool reach the final.It will be the team from the semi-final, Carragher said. You could see that on Sunday from the team against West Brom - 11 changes - so the team picks itself.But the former Liverpool centre-back is less confident that Liverpool will breeze past Sevilla on the night. Liverpool have knocked out Manchester United and Borussia Dortmund already I think its going to be a tough game, Carragher said. Its going to be a tougher proposition than Villarreal, even though Villarreal are further up the table in La Liga.Sevilla have got huge experience in this competition, the players have been here before, theyre used to playing in finals and winning trophies. But I think if Liverpool can take that performance against Villarreal into the final then I think they can just about do it.One of Klopps biggest dilemmas will be deciding which of his centre-forwards should start the game in Basel. Divock Origi was sensational up top in both legs against Borussia Dortmund and was named Liverpools Player of the Month for April, but has only just returned to training after an ankle injury. Sevilla have won the last two Europa League titles Christian Benteke has also impressed in the last few weeks of the season, but Souness believes Daniel Sturridge is the pick of the bunch.I think Sturridge has as much ability as any striker out there in British football right now, Souness said. I was going to say in the world, but the boys at Barcelona and Real Madrid are a wee bit different.Sturridges pure technical ability is up there with the very best. His problem is he just cant keep himself fit. He has to solve that because hes an exceptionally talented boy. I think Sturridge has as much ability as any striker out there in British football right now. Hes an exceptionally talented boy Graeme Souness Win on Wednesday and Liverpool will qualify for next seasons Champions League, making it five English teams in Europes elite competition next season. But Carragher told Sky Sports News HQ that winning a trophy will be more important for the players.The whole thing about winning on Wednesday is it gets you in the Champions League as well, Carragher said. Thats a whole different proposition, money-wise, prestige-wise, attracting players-wise. Its huge.But the biggest thing for those players, the manager, is to win a trophy. Forget what comes next season and European football, if you get your hands on trophies and medals hopefully that can be the start of something big under Jurgen Klopp. Winning a trophy could be the start of something big for Liverpool However, Souness believes that Champions League qualification is the biggest prize for Klopps side.You win and theres competition - the budgets different, the players that you can attract are very different, Souness said. So hell have one eye on one group of players I imagine and an eye on another group, because your budget becomes very different if youre in the Champions League.It really is a priority for them to be back in the Champions League because for the club to grow youve got to be in there on a regular basis. Football at the highest level is all geared around the big boys being in the Champions League. Also See: Liverpool confident of victory Sevilla titles mean nothing Klopp: Eighth not my dream spot Liverpool season review Cheap Custom Adidas Hockey Jerseys . John Lucas, signed as a mentor for rookie Trey Burke, showed he can score if required, scoring 12 points of his 16 points in the second quarter as Utah built an 18-point lead. Custom Tampa Bay Lightning Jerseys .ca! Kerry, Two nights after the Scott-Eriksson incident in Buffalo, the Bruins returned home to play San Jose. In that game, Zdeno Chara put a check on Tommy Wingels that clearly targeted his head. http://www.nhljerseyscustom.com/ .J. -- Pitcher Carl Pavano is retiring after 14 major league seasons. Discount Custom NHL Shirts . The 31-year-old Spain midfielder hasnt played since Madrid lost in the Copa del Rey final to Atletico Madrid in May due to back and foot injuries. Custom NHL Jerseys . Nathan MacKinnon, Jamie McGinn and Jan Hejda also scored for the Avalanche, who won despite being outshot 38-23. MacKinnons goal, also on the power play, came with just over a minute remaining. For the second time this week, were here to talk about a teams chances after losing its starting quarterback to a serious injury. After Tony Romo went down for the Cowboys earlier this weekend, Vikings quarterback?Teddy Bridgewater?suffered a serious knee injury in practice Tuesday. It speaks to the severity of the early reports surrounding the injury that the eventual diagnosis of a season-ending torn ACL and dislocated knee was seen as a lucky break for Minnesota.It was Romo and the 2015 Cowboys who offered a perfect example of how a team can be felled quickly by an injury to their starting passer. Dallas went 12-4 during a banner 2014 campaign and started 2-0 last season, before Romo broke his collarbone. They then went 0-7, won Romos first game back, and after Romo broke his collarbone for a second time, went 1-5 the rest of the way. Theres at least a chance things go pear-shaped in the same way for the Vikings, too.My suspicion, though, is that the Vikings arent this years version of the Cowboys. Its hard to argue that they will be better without their starting quarterback, and I wont claim they will be. But there are reasons to believe the Vikings could be competitive in 2016 and not suffer the fate of last years Cowboys. Lets look at the post-Teddy roster and identify why the Vikings and their fans should still hold out hope:This defense could be really good ... and better than last year.Some might make the case that the Vikings were already great on defense last year by using traditional numbers. Mike Zimmers defense finished the year fifth in points allowed, but some of that comes out in the contextual wash. Minnesota faced only?170 meaningful possessions, the fourth-lowest total in the league, and its defense started its average drive with the fifth-best starting field position in football.As a result, the Vikings finished the season 14th in DVOA, just below the Colts, who arent exactly drawing attention as an up-and-coming defense. In a way, though, finishing 14th is better for their chances of improving on defense this season than finishing fifth, right? Minnesota has been steadily improving under Zimmer, too. After inheriting a defense that finished 27th in DVOA before his arrival in 2013, Zimmers charges finished 23rd as he reshaped the unit before jumping to 14th last season.Its a young defense in a lot of spots, too, even if the numbers are skewed a bit by some older starters. The Football Outsiders Almanac 2016 notes that the average Vikings defender in for a given snap last year was 27.5 years old, which was the fourth-oldest in the league. But those numbers include huge workloads with more than 80 percent of the defensive snaps for defensive end Brian Robison, who was 32 last year, and cornerback Terence Newman, who was 37. Outside linebacker Chad Greenway, also 32 last year, played 58.8 percent of the defensive snaps.Robison and Newman should shift further into defensive rotations this year and lose snaps to a pair of second-year defenders, defensive end Danielle Hunter and 2015 first-round pick Trae Waynes. Hunter, who had six sacks last year, is likely to be the teams starting end across from Everson Griffen by the end of the year. Waynes struggled at times as a rookie, but even future superstar cornerbacks often struggle as rookies. With Waynes and 2016 second-rounder Mackensie Alexander in reserve, the Vikings have options if Newman finally feels the effects of Father Time.Elsewhere, the Vikings have five above-average starters who are all first- or second-round picks from their last five draft classes, paced by star safety Harrison Smith. Smith and versatile linebacker Anthony Barr are already Pro Bowlers, and the other three are each capable of making another leap forward this year. Cornerback Xavier Rhodes has improved dramatically during his time in the league and needs only to cut down on his penalties to justify Pro Bowl consideration. Defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd might already be there if he could make it through a 16-game season, and middle linebacker Eric Kendricks shored up the teams perennial weak spot at middle linebacker after taking over as a starter in midseason. These guys are all already good and young enough to have a shot at becoming great.More than anything, theres just so much talent on this defense that there are bound to be guys who make plays on a weekly basis. Griffen had 10.5 sacks last year, which isnt bad by any means, but his 30 quarterback knockdowns suggest that hes likely to improve the sack total in 2016 if he stays healthy. Reserve interior pass-rusher Tom Johnson might be one of the most underrated players in all of football; for just over $2 million, the Vikings got 20 knockdowns out of Johnson last year, as many as the Dolphins got from Ndamukong Suh.Its not a guarantee the Minnesota defense improves in 2016. It was the leagues seventh-healthiest unit per Adjusted Games Lost last season and ranked second in red-zone defense in terms of points allowed per trip inside the 20. Both of those factors are incredibly important and incredibly unlikely to occur on an annual basis. Even if the Vikings do play worse in the red zone and struggle more with injuries, though, theyre deep enough and talented enough on defense that a baseline level of play should get better. At the very least, theres a significant chance the Vikings are a better defense in 2016, which was unlikely for the Cowboys and their fluky league-leading takeaway rate this time last year.Theyre the most run-heavy offense in the league ... and Adrian Peterson is?still here.In one sense, the Vikings needed less out of their quarterback than any other team. They attempted just 454 passes last year, the fewest in all of football and a whopping 117 attempts below the NFL average. All but seven of those passes came from Bridgewater. Only the Rams averaged fewer passing yards per game than Minnesotas 183.0 yards per contest.This is a run-first football team. As I mentioned when writing about Bridgewater earlier this month, the Vikings ran the ball 66.5 percent of the time on first-and-10 when the game was within 14 points. That was the highest rate in football. A league-high 27.2 percent of Bridgewaters passes involved play-action. The Vikings pounded the ball as much as anybody in football and still finished eighth in DVOA, speaking to their rare combination of both volume and efficiency.Its also not crazy to imagine the running game being even better in 2015. They will lose Bridgewater, who has been a surprisingly efficient runner on designed draws and scrambles, and its always risky to believe that Peterson (or any back) will make it through a full 16-game season, as he did in 2015, without missing a week or two with injuries. The Vikings do have a wildly productive backup for Peterson in third-year man Jerick McKinnon, though, and were fourth in rushing DVOA in 2014 while Peterson sat on the exempt list for 15 of 16 games.Instead, the Vikings could be better running the football because of an improved offensive line. Minnesota spent all of 2015 wiithout two starters up front, losing center John Sullivan and right tackle Phil Loadholt to season-ending injuries.dddddddddddd. Sullivan and Loadholt are gone; Loadholt retired, and Sullivan was released Tuesday. Joe Berger excelled in Sullivans absence at center, and Minnesota imported free agents?Andre Smith and Alex Boone, both of whom have been excellent run blockers when healthy. Minnesota also got a piece of now-forgotten good news when H-back Rhett Ellison returned to practice last week after tearing his patella in January.The Cowboys, meanwhile, couldnt have been as effective in 2015 as they were the previous year. They lost DeMarco Murray, who had produced a career year and stayed healthy for the first time as a pro in 2014. Their five starting offensive linemen started 75 of 80 games together in 2014, while guard Ronald Leary went down with a groin injury in the very first week of the season in 2015. He would have gotten his job back if it werent for the presence of freakish rookie guard Lael Collins, whom the Cowboys were lucky to see fall into undrafted free agency, but the point about the line struggling to be quite as healthy still stands. Dallas also never really had a healthy Dez Bryant in 2015, which dramatically impacted the passing attack, independent of their quarterback situation.The dropoff from Bridgewater to Shaun Hill isnt anywhere near as bad as the dropoff from Romo to Matt Cassel and Brandon Weeden.While Romo threw only 435 passes in 2014, he was incredibly efficient and effective on those passes, leading the league in completion percentage, yards per attempt, passer rating and QBR. His replacements did not threaten to lead the league in anything, at least not anything good. Bryants absence and limited ability didnt help matters, but going from Romos MVP-caliber season to Cassel learning the playbook in midseason is about as big of a swing as youll see at quarterback.Bridgewater and Hill have different styles, and Bridgewater obviously has more long-term upside than a 36-year-old backup, but their level of production as pros hasnt been that different. Since throwing his first professional pass in 2007, Hill has posted a QBR of 45.6. Bridgewater posted a 62.7 figure last year and is at 59.9 so far as a pro. The difference between Romo in 2014 (a QBR of 83.6) and the various Dallas passers in 2015 (39.8) was much larger.Lets put it in context another way. The pro-football-reference.com Index statistics adjust a quarterbacks statistics for the era in which he was performing and scale them so that 100 is league-average. Since Hill threw that first pass in 2007, he has posted an era-adjusted passer rating (Rate+) of 101, right in line with Eli Manning and Jay Cutler. In terms of adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A+), which is probably the best single-number quarterback metric using raw statistics, Hill has posted a mark of 98. Thats just below Joe Flacco (99) and good for 29th out of the 47 quarterbacks who have thrown 1,000 passes or more over that timeframe. Hills era-adjusted career numbers arent notably worse than Bridgewaters. In some cases, theyre actually better. Take a look:The problem, of course, is with aging curves. Bridgewater is 23 and was likely to continue improving with a young receiving corps and an improved offensive line. Hill is 36 and has just one season with meaningful action since the end of the 2010 season, when he was mediocre for the 2014 Rams and went 3-7 despite an excellent defense. That was with a porous offensive line and the infamously dull Brian Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator, though, and Hill should have more to work with as the regular in Minnesota this season.Hill might actually fit into Norv Turners scheme.Again, in looking back at the Bridgewater piece from earlier this month, I noted how Turner has really built a scheme around his offenses strengths and weaknesses. His offensive line wasnt great, so Turners running game was built more around timing and misdirection and slowing defenders down with threats of run-pass options from Bridgewater, who did an excellent job of handling the football before giving it to Peterson or attempting a pass.The other notable tendency with the offense has been attacking deep. Bridgewater made excellent throws downfield here and there, but overall as a pro he hasnt been an effective deep passer in terms of efficiency. Turner has also accounted for that in his playcalling and doesnt have Bridgewater throw downfield very often, which is out of character for an offensive coordinator who loved to have Philip Rivers chu